#SellBeforeWeDai Action/Inaction Group

[Sutekh]

Because they know what the rules are, and what the timeline was, mainly.

I'm not referring to FFP breaches, I'm talking about the fact that they approved his ownership in the first place, even though EPL had rejected him and there were already red flags raised about the way he conducted business. The bar for ownership may have been set extremely low at the time but that bar was set by the EFL.

The owners test is simply - does he have enough money, and can show he does. Does he have any disqualifying conditions? That's it - it is a check to ensure the person taking over can run the club at the time of the takeover - it does not offer any ongoing check that they are suitable 7 years later - that is the failure. Ownership checks should be ongoing.

This. The ODT (believe that is what it is called now - Owners and Directors Test) is pretty useless unless it's run against all club owners on an annual basis. And these tests should be the same in all leagues across the world so you do not get the stupidity of PL saying No and the FL saying Yes or vice versa.

[WestYorksRoyal]

I blame the PL. Everything would be better had they bought Hull instead.

[Forbury Lion]

I'm not referring to FFP breaches, I'm talking about the fact that they approved his ownership in the first place, even though EPL had rejected him and there were already red flags raised about the way he conducted business. The bar for ownership may have been set extremely low at the time but that bar was set by the EFL.

The owners test is simply - does he have enough money, and can show he does. Does he have any disqualifying conditions? That's it - it is a check to ensure the person taking over can run the club at the time of the takeover - it does not offer any ongoing check that they are suitable 7 years later - that is the failure. Ownership checks should be ongoing.

This. The ODT (believe that is what it is called now - Owners and Directors Test) is pretty useless unless it's run against all club owners on an annual basis. And these tests should be the same in all leagues across the world so you do not get the stupidity of PL saying No and the FL saying Yes or vice versa.

The tests should be broadly the same, but you might get the situation where someone tried to buy a big club but it's determined they don't have the funds, but they may have enough funds to buy a smaller club or it's possible their funding situation changes.

In the case of Dai Yongge and others like him, they should take into account their past business failings/track record, especially when it comes to football and other sporting clubs.

[Snowflake Royal]

Because they know what the rules are, and what the timeline was, mainly.

I'm not referring to FFP breaches, I'm talking about the fact that they approved his ownership in the first place, even though EPL had rejected him and there were already red flags raised about the way he conducted business. The bar for ownership may have been set extremely low at the time but that bar was set by the EFL.

The owners test is simply - does he have enough money, and can show he does. Does he have any disqualifying conditions? That's it - it is a check to ensure the person taking over can run the club at the time of the takeover - it does not offer any ongoing check that they are suitable 7 years later - that is the failure. Ownership checks should be ongoing.

He knows.

[Snowflake Royal]

The owners test is simply - does he have enough money, and can show he does. Does he have any disqualifying conditions? That's it - it is a check to ensure the person taking over can run the club at the time of the takeover - it does not offer any ongoing check that they are suitable 7 years later - that is the failure. Ownership checks should be ongoing.

This. The ODT (believe that is what it is called now - Owners and Directors Test) is pretty useless unless it's run against all club owners on an annual basis. And these tests should be the same in all leagues across the world so you do not get the stupidity of PL saying No and the FL saying Yes or vice versa.

The tests should be broadly the same, but you might get the situation where someone tried to buy a big club but it's determined they don't have the funds, but they may have enough funds to buy a smaller club or it's possible their funding situation changes.

In the case of Dai Yongge and others like him, they should take into account their past business failings/track record, especially when it comes to football and other sporting clubs.

He didn't have any.

[tmesis]

This. The ODT (believe that is what it is called now - Owners and Directors Test) is pretty useless unless it's run against all club owners on an annual basis. And these tests should be the same in all leagues across the world so you do not get the stupidity of PL saying No and the FL saying Yes or vice versa.

The tests should be broadly the same, but you might get the situation where someone tried to buy a big club but it's determined they don't have the funds, but they may have enough funds to buy a smaller club or it's possible their funding situation changes.

In the case of Dai Yongge and others like him, they should take into account their past business failings/track record, especially when it comes to football and other sporting clubs.

He didn't have any.

The utterly bizarre thing in all of this is that he could have been a good owner, if he hadn't been so utterly clueless, stubborn, and enthralled with the advice of terrible people. I'm mystified as to why he trusts Kia so much, when he's helped him waste the best part of £200 million.

[Clyde1998]

The tests should be broadly the same, but you might get the situation where someone tried to buy a big club but it's determined they don't have the funds, but they may have enough funds to buy a smaller club or it's possible their funding situation changes.

In the case of Dai Yongge and others like him, they should take into account their past business failings/track record, especially when it comes to football and other sporting clubs.

He didn't have any.

The utterly bizarre thing in all of this is that he could have been a good owner, if he hadn't been so utterly clueless, stubborn, and enthralled with the advice of terrible people. I'm mystified as to why he trusts Kia so much, when he's helped him waste the best part of £200 million.

All he had to do was allow the people who knew what they were doing the space to continue operating. Didn't Brain Trevathan resign due to Dai interfering with transfers and preventing him from carrying out a strategy that would've been sustainable? There was a rumour that we didn't have any scouts at one point!

[Snowflake Royal]

He didn't have any.

The utterly bizarre thing in all of this is that he could have been a good owner, if he hadn't been so utterly clueless, stubborn, and enthralled with the advice of terrible people. I'm mystified as to why he trusts Kia so much, when he's helped him waste the best part of £200 million.

All he had to do was allow the people who knew what they were doing the space to continue operating. Didn't Brain Trevathan resign due to Dai interfering with transfers and preventing him from carrying out a strategy that would've been sustainable? There was a rumour that we didn't have any scouts at one point!

The former was blamed on Gourlay, the latter was outright stated by Ince.

[Hound]

Even if there was an annual check, could they actually force an owner to sell if they subsequently failed it?

It does feel like really significant changes are needed to prevent this happening again to some other poor club

[OLLIE KEARNS]

Even if there was an annual check, could they actually force an owner to sell if they subsequently failed it?

It does feel like really significant changes are needed to prevent this happening again to some other poor club

No they couldn’t but they could put steps in place that would prevent a one time gamble of getting to the premier league. 1) Allowing a stadium to be sold and counted as revenue should never have been allowed under the rules. Never allow this again. 2) The EFL could also intervene much earlier. For example, if you lose £20m in year 1 of a 3 year FFP cycle a business plan is required to ensure the limit of £39m is met over the 3 years. If the staging posts aren’t met then immediately impose a points penalty rather than after the gamble has failed.
There are plenty more things that could be done that would prevent things ever getting to this stage. Too late for us and we won’t be the last club in this mess but it would help to safeguard the future.

[Dirk Gently]

I'm not referring to FFP breaches, I'm talking about the fact that they approved his ownership in the first place, even though EPL had rejected him and there were already red flags raised about the way he conducted business. The bar for ownership may have been set extremely low at the time but that bar was set by the EFL.

The owners test is simply - does he have enough money, and can show he does. Does he have any disqualifying conditions? That's it - it is a check to ensure the person taking over can run the club at the time of the takeover - it does not offer any ongoing check that they are suitable 7 years later - that is the failure. Ownership checks should be ongoing.

This. The ODT (believe that is what it is called now - Owners and Directors Test) is pretty useless unless it's run against all club owners on an annual basis. And these tests should be the same in all leagues across the world so you do not get the stupidity of PL saying No and the FL saying Yes or vice versa.

Yes.

Plus the crucial difference is that the PL has vast sums of money and is happy to use slightly dodgy undercover sources as well as extremely expensive forensic accountants to check the bona fides of prospective owners. This is often the only way to get information about offshore/hidden assets and because it's been obtained in slightly questionable ways they can't share it.

The FL, in contrast, doesn't have a pot to p*ss in, so all they can afford to do is minimal checks - and their biggest fear is turning down someone rich when they don't have evidence or just cause, and then getting sued to smithereens - rich businessmen love lawyers and litigation. If the FL lost a case like this the whole football league would cease to exist.

In this scenario I believe that the PL found something they didn't like when they looked at Dai, but the way they obtained this meant it couldn't be shared with the FL. So the FL, when they had to do checks, had no reason to turn him down, even though privately they might have wanted to.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Even if there was an annual check, could they actually force an owner to sell if they subsequently failed it?

It does feel like really significant changes are needed to prevent this happening again to some other poor club

No they couldn’t but they could put steps in place that would prevent a one time gamble of getting to the premier league. 1) Allowing a stadium to be sold and counted as revenue should never have been allowed under the rules. Never allow this again. 2) The EFL could also intervene much earlier. For example, if you lose £20m in year 1 of a 3 year FFP cycle a business plan is required to ensure the limit of £39m is met over the 3 years. If the staging posts aren’t met then immediately impose a points penalty rather than after the gamble has failed.
There are plenty more things that could be done that would prevent things ever getting to this stage. Too late for us and we won’t be the last club in this mess but it would help to safeguard the future.

There should be limits on registering players as in La Liga - we see Barcelona desperately trying to shift players every year to free up wages for their next big signing but it works.

In terms of other suggestion you have, pretty sure the stadium loophole is closed now, while the EFL were trying to warn us and had us under soft embargo in 2019. They let us out and we went nuts; perhaps they could have taken a harder stance, but sometimes the line between collaborative and strict is hard to get right.

Which is why a prospective framework which looks forwards at your wage bill against forecast income is better. The concept of FFP is flawed really. It allows £13m losses per annum in the Championship and £35m in the Premier League, and this excludes some funding such as the academy. So you can live well within those guidelines and still be completely dependent upon your owner. It's the dependence on owner that needs to be eradicated. Perhaps those limits can still exist subject to placing deposits with the EFL/PL.

[Uke]

Aren't Pang and Dai on other sides of a court case at the moment - Dai owes money to a company that Pang runs, or Pang is the UK designate for?

Not sure that really helps the situation in terms of getting this all sorted in the way we want.

Not sure that's the case. But for all of 'the dirt' on Dai (and there's plenty of it), it's well worth following this guy on Twitter/X https://twitter.com/mikeygow/status/1746263168840552952

It seems Dai likes to help ex-offenders and in 2013 hired a guy to help him who had been sentenced in China to 6 years imprisonment for embezzlement!

Given all of this, it seems absolutely incredible that EFL decided that someone like Dai was suitable to own our (or indeed any other) club. Yet still some question how the EFL are at fault for the mess we find ourselves in!

Very interesting thread: https://twitter.com/mikeygow/status/1746344764499226881

1. Dai Yongge bribed Sun Lijun to bring PSB investigation and criminal charges against Guan

Another outcome was of the trial was that Guan had to pay Renhe Group (Dai Yongge’s company) ¥623m in reparations for the alleged fraud.

But the company at which the alleged fraud took place was never owned by Dai Yongge.

It’s unclear what consequences, if any, there could be from this for Dai. But if a retrial acquits Guan (and there’s a 99.7% conviction rate in PRC criminal courts - so they may delay the retrial inevitably or until he can be released without the system admitting a mistake). Dai could have to reimburse Guan the ¥623m he and Renhe Group was awarded after the initial trial

Add that to the ¥1.175bn a Liaoning High Court judgement demanded last week that Dai and companies must repay to state-owned banks and another potential ¥1.7bn in a separate yet very similar case brought against Dai and his companies in Feb 2023 and it’s not looking good for Dai Yongge.

As pointed out on the other thread, China has the death penalty for embezzlement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_o ... l_offenses

With all the other shit he’s in for, the collapse of his businesses is very likely to literally be a life or death struggle for Dai

So he won’t give a shit about us

[Dirk Gently]

Which is a prospective framework which looks forwards at your wage bill against forecast income is better. The concept of FFP is flawed really. It's £13m losses per annum in the Championship and £35m in the Premier League, and this excludes some funding such as the academy. So you can live well within those guidelines and still be completely dependent upon your owner. It's the dependence on owner that needs to be eradicated. Perhaps those limits can still exist subject to placing deposits with the EFL/PL.

The mindset of the majority of supporters would need to change for that to be possible. For every few who want a club to be financially responsible and live within its means, there are a few hundred who loudly want more and more "investment" and will abuse an owner who doesn't hand over ever-larger sums to finance their hobby.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Which is a prospective framework which looks forwards at your wage bill against forecast income is better. The concept of FFP is flawed really. It's £13m losses per annum in the Championship and £35m in the Premier League, and this excludes some funding such as the academy. So you can live well within those guidelines and still be completely dependent upon your owner. It's the dependence on owner that needs to be eradicated. Perhaps those limits can still exist subject to placing deposits with the EFL/PL.

The mindset of the majority of supporters would need to change for that to be possible. For every few who want a club to be financially responsible and live within its means, there are a few hundred who loudly want more and more "investment" and will abuse an owner who doesn't hand over ever-larger sums to finance their hobby.

And that's fine, so long as owners deposit capital. It would show them the significance of their decisions; how much would we have needed from Dai for Moore's contract?

[Snowflake Royal]

Even if there was an annual check, could they actually force an owner to sell if they subsequently failed it?

It does feel like really significant changes are needed to prevent this happening again to some other poor club

51% fan ownership, remaining 49% sold as a licence, with regular (probably not annual tbf) checks and transparent spending. Independent organisation to oversee all transfer fees and wage negotiations, with wages capped at 75% of turnover, with the ability to go over that (up to 90%) for up to two seasons, but then have to reduce to 70% for at least one season afterwards. Failure to run the club within league rules results in the licence being revoked and resold.

But football can't do this. It would be up to the Gov.

[Dirk Gently]

Which is a prospective framework which looks forwards at your wage bill against forecast income is better. The concept of FFP is flawed really. It's £13m losses per annum in the Championship and £35m in the Premier League, and this excludes some funding such as the academy. So you can live well within those guidelines and still be completely dependent upon your owner. It's the dependence on owner that needs to be eradicated. Perhaps those limits can still exist subject to placing deposits with the EFL/PL.

The mindset of the majority of supporters would need to change for that to be possible. For every few who want a club to be financially responsible and live within its means, there are a few hundred who loudly want more and more "investment" and will abuse an owner who doesn't hand over ever-larger sums to finance their hobby.

And that's fine, so long as owners deposit capital. It would show them the significance of their decisions; how much would we have needed from Dai for Moore's contract?

Yessss - but this doesn't get over the fundamental problem that the money handed over by an owner isn't handed over without strings. It goes against the company as debt, making it so much harder for anyone else to come in and reducing the overall viability of that company. A massive debt owed to an individual, even if it’s only a paper debt, is absolute dependence!

If sums given by owners could be properly given as a gift rather than as a loan or a share issue then that would make things so very much better.

[Greatwesternline]

Even if there was an annual check, could they actually force an owner to sell if they subsequently failed it?

It does feel like really significant changes are needed to prevent this happening again to some other poor club

51% fan ownership, remaining 49% sold as a licence, with regular (probably not annual tbf) checks and transparent spending. Independent organisation to oversee all transfer fees and wage negotiations, with wages capped at 75% of turnover, with the ability to go over that (up to 90%) for up to two seasons, but then have to reduce to 70% for at least one season afterwards. Failure to run the club within league rules results in the licence being revoked and resold.

But football can't do this. It would be up to the Gov.

The fans don't have the money to finance losses, would other people be willing to stump up for the losses but not have overa'l control of the club?

It could work so long as the clubs have annual budgets signed off by the league. And aren't allowed to operate deficits.

No need to kick out owners if clubs aren't allowed to get into debt,

[Greatwesternline]

The mindset of the majority of supporters would need to change for that to be possible. For every few who want a club to be financially responsible and live within its means, there are a few hundred who loudly want more and more "investment" and will abuse an owner who doesn't hand over ever-larger sums to finance their hobby.

And that's fine, so long as owners deposit capital. It would show them the significance of their decisions; how much would we have needed from Dai for Moore's contract?

Yessss - but this doesn't get over the fundamental problem that the money handed over by an owner isn't handed over without strings. It goes against the company as debt, making it so much harder for anyone else to come in and reducing the overall viability of that company. A massive debt owed to an individual, even if it’s only a paper debt, is absolute dependence!

If sums given by owners could be properly given as a gift rather than as a loan or a share issue then that would make things so very much better.

Share issues don't have to be paid back. They are effectively gifts. Same for any injection of equity funding.

[Dirk Gently]

Even if there was an annual check, could they actually force an owner to sell if they subsequently failed it?

It does feel like really significant changes are needed to prevent this happening again to some other poor club

51% fan ownership, remaining 49% sold as a licence, with regular (probably not annual tbf) checks and transparent spending. Independent organisation to oversee all transfer fees and wage negotiations, with wages capped at 75% of turnover, with the ability to go over that (up to 90%) for up to two seasons, but then have to reduce to 70% for at least one season afterwards. Failure to run the club within league rules results in the licence being revoked and resold.

But football can't do this. It would be up to the Gov.

Yes. But the big problem is where do you get the money to compensate the owners for the 51% of football clubs they own, together with the massive amounts of debt attached to their club. In times of cost of living crisis, and underfunded health service and social care collapsing across the UK, what party is going to tell electors that they're spending millions if not billions to buy 51% of 92+ football clubs on behalf of their supporters?